I’ve thought long and hard about doing a series on what it’s
like to live with mental illness, especially when there’s more going on than a
single diagnosis. In fact, there’s really no single diagnosis that can truly
define what I have and what I am. The best that psychiatrists, psychologists,
clinicians, social workers, and counselors have come up with is best summed up
in a list of possibilities shared over the years. Let’s see if I can remember them all, these will not be in any
specific order and do not include all of the guesses:
Bipolar Type I – Not otherwise specified (NOS)
Bipolar Type II – NOS
Bipolar Type II with psychotic features
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (now being referred to as
Complex PTSD due to years of sustained trauma)
Dissociative Identity Disorder
Asperger’s Syndrome
Schizoaffective Disorder
Borderline Personality Disorder
Bulimia
Binge Eating Disorder
Drug and alcohol addiction
Shall I keep going or do you get the point? Yeah, I’m fucked
up when you look at me on paper. I’m “fucked up” when you only know me through
my Facebook posts. I’m “fucked up” when you catch me on a bad day and I’m not
able to self regulate and I’m essentially going into crisis. Inside, my head is
a mess. I take a lot of medication to live with this. Are all or some of the above true? Not all of them can be concurrent
diagnoses but several of them are relevant. I agree with the Bipolar with
psychotic features, the C-PTSD, the dissociative disorder (without the identity
issue), the bulimia, the binge eating, and the addiction. That’s still quite a lot for
someone to live with. To live with it being able to function is, to me, a
miracle when some of the clients I work with have experienced less and are in a
worse state than I. I guess it goes to count for the resiliency theory right?
Anyway, one gets to thinking when they meet someone who is a,
to use the stigmatized term of “mental case,” how in the hell someone gets so
fouled up. It’s a good question. It’s a valid question. But it’s also one that not
many can ever answer because they lack the insight. Because of my job and
because of the fact that I am a social science major with the goal of working
as a neuropsych professional, I do have the insight. I’ve felt for a long time
that it would be valuable to share these with others to help them understand
not only me but those around them who may not be easily understood.
Before I get on with this I will say a few things: First of
all, I am not really a professional. Yes, I work in the mental health system
but I am NOT a clinician, I am only a mental health recovery counselor which translates to "Hey, I've been there too, let me help you through your shit by using the knowledge of my own shit to guide you." Nothing I share here is meant to be taken as clinical
advice and, in truth, some of what I share can be triggering. I am not holding
anything back. If you know me, work with me, listen to my music, or are just a
passerby; there are going to be things shared here that are deeply personal and
may be things you’ve never heard from me before. I’m doing this to help myself
and to, hopefully, help others with the understanding that I’m empathizing , disclosing, but
not treating or offering treatment.
There will be examples and some details. I will change the
names of some individuals to be respectful and I will not discuss clients that I
work with.... at all. HIPPA is a big deal in this day and age and to violate that
could mean my job, fines, and a whole lot of shit I don't want. I want that out there in case anyone gets the funny idea of
trying to go to my supervisors with this and say, “Oh hey by the way, she’s talking
about so and so on her blog.” So the disclaimer effectively covers my ass and,
besides, I know/knew enough fucked up people to fill this thing for years without going near my job.
Finally, my med regimen, which I will talk about, is MY
regimen and what works for me may not work for you. Please do not go to your
P-Doc and say, “So I read on this blog that (drug name) worked for this person
and their symptoms were better/worse because of it, I think I should try this/stop this.” Please always
follow the instructions of your clinical team and if you have questions, talk to them. They have degrees. I don’t… yet.
That all being said… here we go.
The thing that got this going was thinking about my father,
whom I will name because he doesn't deserve protection, Greg W. Howard (google him some time). My mother and Greg met
while serving in the Marines together while out in San Diego. Sparing the
details, I happened at some point along in their relationship. They had moved
to North Carolina before I was born and
they got hitched. Some time later, viola, I
come howling into the world while my father was stoned on the weed he'd been smoking with his friend when my mom went into labor. Things were supposedly good though and I supposedly had a good first year. In hindsight,
according to my mom, they weren’t. I was left in the care of a questionable woman who, for kicks, like to call social services on my parents for starters. More to the point though, my father was/is a very sick man with the
possibility of a diagnosis of schizophrenia. At the very least, he is a very
delusional individual with issues that run the gamut of pathologically lying (he claims he went to the Citadel when in reality he was kicked out and discharged from the Marines for abusing my mother), cheating on multiple wives (one of which he is still married to even though he was having an affair with a woman named Cara when I found him), violence (he threw his own mother down a set of stairs and sexually assaulted his own brother), and so much more.
My very first memory is of him
beating up my mother and shoving her across a room while she was pregnant with my brother. I
was no more than three at the time and there was no way I should have known
about it but my mother confirmed it years later when I told her I kept seeing
it in my head. My next memory was my father holding me up to a window to show
me my new brother. Another of us in a car, driving redneck style with me in his
lap. After that it’s a haze. I vaguely remember a game of blocks and a ride to
a local store in Massachusetts after it happened but I
can’t really tell if it’s true or not.
What was it that
happened and why is it so important to my development as a person? It was my mother, my two week old
brother, and me being put onto a plane headed back to Boston with my father’s
promise that he would either send for us or come back. Neither of these
happened. It wasn’t until I was 16 years old that I ever talked with my father
again and it didn’t go well.
The years up until that communication with my father began
were trying. By the time I was 13 I had already experienced abuse in a number
of ways and it continued until was removed from my mother’s home for “good” by
the age of 16 and a half. That all will come later. But what sticks out is the
way my father handled the situation when I did barge my way into his life with
a letter telling him I wanted to talk to him and wanted to understand what had
happened. I sent this letter, against my mother’s warning of “Be careful what
you go digging up,” and I waited… and waited… until one day the phone rang and
it was the voice of a man asking for me by my legal name. It was perfectly
pronounced the way it was meant to be and somehow I knew it was him.
I’ll be honest in saying that the first few weeks, months
maybe, were euphoric but then it all went south. My mother was resentful of me
bringing this man back into her life after the pain he had caused her, my
brother was also displeased since he was not asked after, and I was isolated in
my reunion. I had to keep the phone calls a secret and when the joy finally
passed and I asked him why he left and why he never tried to come back, the
answers were less than satisfactory. Much to the point that I’ve blocked most of
the detail of it and only remember that he wanted to avoid it and pretend that
everything was fine. When I refused, I was rejected again. This time while
sitting on a payphone on a psych unit after I had tried to take my life and I
was asking him for help since my own mother didn’t want me back. and I was looking at being placed into a group home until the age of 18. I later
learned that my father didn’t want me messing up his life (his sex life to be exact, gross huh?) and the idea of
bringing me into his world was unthinkable. So I spent days in my room in the hospital
not wanting to even breathe because my father had abandoned me again, my mother
had turned her back on me for trying to find him, and my very first boyfriend
ever had broken up with me just months before. My friends at the time stopped
coming to see me in the hospital, and I was alone. To address this grief I was heavily drugged on thorazine to the point of being nearly chemically lobotomized. But, hey, at least the pain went away and I could stop reacting to it by going into rages right?
Over the years I tried many times to talk to my father again
only to experience the same results. I wanted answers and he dodged them. My
way of coping was to lash out. If you googled him, you’ve seen that he is a
very unpopular person. Up to the point where he attempted to sue Twitter after making threats against the president and
his wife, my step-mother, calls him a “political refugee of Twitter." He is
an ultra-conservative who would likely team up with Trump if he was given the
chance. My lashing out was quite public and the result was a woman contacting
me claiming to be the wife of my half brother and supposedly understanding my vitriol. I later found out she was a
friend of my father’s looking to get information about me. Why? I didn’t stick
around to find out once I realized she was not who she said she was and she had
no intention of putting me in contact with my brother Will. When I figured out what she was up to I promptly wrote love letters to my step-mother, grandmother, and my other half-brother letting them all know exactly what my feelings were on the matter considering that my very existence has been kept a secret from my brothers. Nice huh?
Just thinking about all of that makes my head spin but it’s
a good place to start and now is a good place to stop. Many think that having
their father die on them is the worst that can happen. I agree that losing a
parent hurts, especially when they loved you and were a part of your life. That
is a loss that I imagine to be devastating. For me though, I suffered numerous
losses and heartbreaks from the same man over and over again to the point where devastation doesn't even begin to describe the pain. This was a man who was
supposed to be my father, my protector. Instead, he was anything but that.
Instead he was someone who set me up to fail from day one by doing the very
thing a father should never do to his children…. And then he did it again… and
again… and again. Each time cutting the hole deeper. Death is painful but
knowing he remains alive with no desire to be what I so desperately needed
throughout my life is, in a way, worse. It would be better if he had died but
he didn’t and it’s something I had to accept but the result is a deep mistrust of people early on in my life. Kindness, to me, is always cause for suspicion because I wonder when it will be taken away or if it's a ruse to get something. I will never accept that a person is here to stay and I am always vigilant for that "inevitable" hurt and abandonment that I know is going to come. Sadly, I usually bring it on myself through my own suspicion and eventual trashing of the friendship to avoid what I believe will be the inevitable pain of their betrayal or abandonment. It's something I continue to work on and I think I'm getting better.
I will end here, truly now, but I thank you for reading this
far (if you did) and I will continue soon. I thank you in advance for coming on
the journey with me. It will be hard but in the end, you will see what it took
to create the person I am today and, I, along with you, will be puzzling out
how I am not even more fucked up than I already am.
